FIX the AUCTION HOUSE!!!!

There is no real way to solve this besides SE putting floors and ceilings on prices, I doubt many people would be receptive of that.

The only other way is to have a weekly average calculated on server prices and not let anyone undercut or overprice by more than 10% of the average, this would require a lot of work on SE's behalf though and no doubt server space, so don't see this happening.

FFXI actually AH was much better as you couldn't see what people were selling items for you could guess based on past transcations

The only reason the economy is crap is due to everyone being every craft class, that alone means there are more supplies then demands, not to mention SE upped the drop rate of many of the profitable loot like Diremite web and fleece (due to botters and slow spawning of mobs), which further pushed the price down.

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Originally Posted by Lexia

FFXI actually AH was much better as you couldn't see what people were selling items for you could guess based on past transcations

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Undercutting still happened XI, simply because you can see what the past transactions are.

The only way to really combat it, is to make all current and past prices hidden, and that you simply guess what you could get an item for. The problem here, though, is that no one knows the price of an item they are buying.

They could be lucky and get an item for cheap, or they have to keep guessing for an hour because the lowest price is something like 100k, and you are trying 5k increasing by 1k each time. If you don't know that the price is worth that 100k, you have no idea what you are buying and what its value is. This was the most frustrating part of using the AH on XI. Even though the last transactions showed a constant 10k value, someone could (and did) put it up for 2x that amount. You had to guess until you got it.

The problem is that some people don't understand markets and how to value an item appropriately. They just go by the fact that, selling for less than someone else and being at the top of the list, will let them sell their item quickly. But if you aren't that bothered about selling fast, you can sell at the "normal" price. As long as it doesn't drop too drastically, at least. At the point, you can always cut your losses, and move onto a new market.

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Originally Posted by Themis

At the point, you can always cut your losses, and move onto a new market.

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I agree on what Themis said. If the item price in question is not selling for you, look for something else. It is not worth the hassle and get stressed from it. I've been selling glamours and tries not to undercut. I also don't sell in bulks or in even sell 1pc in the same category. As what others said, supply and demand.

Uh. It's not an Auction House.

It's a Market

That might be your first issue. The quicker you realize this, the sooner you probably will change your strategies.

But I'm not betting on it...

Who cares, nothing n this game is hard to get, it just depends if I want the item now or not.

No item, in this entire game, should be above 100 gil by itself.

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Originally Posted by RygaenYuui

Uh. It's not an Auction House.

It's a Market

That might be your first issue. The quicker you realize this, the sooner you probably will change your strategies.

But I'm not betting on it...

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Semantics. FFXI called it's thing an auction house, yet it didn't really run like one. Most goods in WoW were set with "Buy It Now" prices, which is basically what XIV has.

Ok, I got a say this... I'm not afraid to stand up and say I got this random behaviour of undercutting stuff in AH just for the sake of undercutting.

Sometime I may undercut up to 20%min....... Sometime, I may even buy up some items then resell them back at a lower price along with the same items I have.

I think maybe insane.... or suffering from too much Lalafell exposure.

Or maybe I just wanna feast of rage and sadness and despair of others.

I am currently hording +crit materia III and a 1/2 dozen others.. soon.........

*insert sinister, yet fill with guilt laugher*

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

XI's AH was far supperior to this one in terms of keeping the economy stable. In the history of mmos XI's ah had the most stable prices over a period of time, they fluctuated but only by like 5-10% over the course of a year (not counting the RMT christmas inflation). XIV what is 10k today will be selling for 1k when you wake up...

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Between end of beta and release I decided to checkout FF11 for old times sake and to get a bit of an FF MMO fix.
At some point I recalled Leaping Boots are a thing. "Ok my login says I was last on 9 years ago. Surely leaping boots must be super cheap at the AH now!" ...

nnnnnnnnnnnope

Simple solution is a listing fee that GW2 did. When you list an item you pay a fee based on how much you put the item up for. If at any point you want to change the price or take the item down you do not receive the listing fee back and must pay again when you put it back up.

This will strait up stop the undercutting war as person A who listed first and then got undercut would not risk losing more money trying to undercut person B who undercut them just to sell faster. This also forces people to pay attention to buying trends and list certain items at reasonable prices.

make a stack of 10 or so items. Then undercut.

Your literally not breaking any rules, because most stores in real life do this kind of crap for the "3 for one " deal...
And if some idiot is competing with you, lower it again. If he's constantly competing with you, make him put it at a shitty price and buy it off him, then resale it to your original price with the new item you ripped off from him.

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Originally Posted by Oriana

lol u like gambling? thats so risky hahaha for a risky guy :)

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Making ARR was a gamble as well... funny you play this game.

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Originally Posted by Skapoc

Simple solution is a listing fee that GW2 did. When you list an item you pay a fee based on how much you put the item up for. If at any point you want to change the price or take the item down you do not receive the listing fee back and must pay again when you put it back up.

This will strait up stop the undercutting war as person A who listed first and then got undercut would not risk losing more money trying to undercut person B who undercut them just to sell faster. This also forces people to pay attention to buying trends and list certain items at reasonable prices.

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you have a point SE need to make something that will hurt people if they change the prince they need to put a litmit on this changing prince every sec min

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Originally Posted by Nayto

make a stack of 10 or so items. Then undercut.

Your literally not breaking any rules, because most stores in real life do this kind of crap for the "3 for one " deal...
And if some idiot is competing with you, lower it again. If he's constantly competing with you, make him put it at a shitty price and buy it off him, then resale it to your original price with the new item you ripped off from him.

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lol u like gambling? thats so risky hahaha for a risky guy :)

I'm a crafter so I understand that there often material costs that effect your listing price. You wanna make back your investment plus a little extra profit. However when it comes to market like xiv has demand is always going to trump material cost when it comes to an items true worth. Just because an item costs a lot to make that doesn't mean it will necessarily sell for the cost to make it. I pay attention to current supply and sale history. If an item is currently in low demand and/or selling for less than crafting cost I don't make it. Just like in real life it takes effort to keep up with an ever fluctuating market. Right now I'm making decent profit of glamour prisms, but every day I check the market and history. One day cloth prisms are in high demand other days it may be leatherworking. Also there is fluctuation between which grade is in demand.

If I were to undercut by a small value say 1 gil. I will come back in 20 minutes and see that none of my items have sold and now the other items are listed 1 or 100 gil below my items.

I aim to undercut by a sufficient enough margin that other sellers are hesitant about undercutting me.

Let's say 10 of a given item are going to sell, and there are 10 items currently up for sale at say 5k. Then I put 10 of the item up for 4900. Throughout the course of the day let's say I sold 3 items before I was undercut. I have made 14,700. Now let's say I put 10 items up for 3k. Other sellers are hesitant to lower their prices to this value long enough so that all 10 of my items sell before I am undercut. In this situation I have made 30k.

I will then make 10 of a completely different item and repeat the process, as to prevent supply overwhelming demand.

Unless they make it so that we can't choose the price (meaning same price for everyone), and the items are sold in order of date-of-entry-in-the-market, basically turning the Board into one big NPC vendor resupplied by players, I don't see how this could be helped in any way.

The only fix I'd like is to be able to choose quantity of items I want to buy off of a stack. God damn miners, I don't need 99 amethysts.

I don't think a price change cooldown will really help with this problem. All it'll do is encourage bigger undercuts because person B will not know when person A put their product up. And if it's an item that is low in demand and sells perhaps one a day, that cooldown may be enough to mess you out of that sale for the day. So it may very well lead to destroying petty 1-100 gil undercuts but make 1000-10,000+ gil undercuts more common.

I won't lie, I will lead a war against those who try that petty undercut game. In fact, I did it earlier this week with someone trying to flip an item they bought off of me. I will undercut until I feel like I am not feeling like I'm making enough profit off of it. And if it causes that person to undercut that personal threshold, I'll buy his/her's product or just leave well enough alone.
The fact is, many of the items crafters make are being sold at anywhere between 1.5 and 4 times what the mats are worth, leaving plenty of margin for profit. As long as I'm coming out ahead, I don't care.

A suggestion for something that may work: actual auctions like WoW has? For those that don't know, you can set a "Buy Now" price, and a starting price for bidding. People are free to bid on the item until time expires or until someone hits "Buy Now". Start the auction at the absolute minimum you're willing to take for the item, and let the players take it from there.

In most markets prices tend to be fairly stable over the longer term, so if you see someone selling items in a niche you are focusing on at a far lower price point than the average price one very common strategy is to buy up the highly underpriced items and relist them at something closer to the usual point. This is assuming that the usual price somewhat reflects the cost and rarity of the item in question in which case it's unsustainable for others to sell the item at the lower point for any length of time. If they can then your preferred price point is simply too high.

Another game i played the market was more of an auction house in that you could see how many of an item were available, the last five transaction dates and prices, and the number of outstanding bids. The minimum price was not visible, so your options were to make a bid based on previous transactions, bid whatever it was worth to you or start at the lowest bid you think is likely to get you the item and increase it until you either bought it or reached the limit of what it's worth to you. It actually worked out pretty well overall.

I absolutly agree with this post.
In my server:

Cashmere robe of healing:

Cashmere Robe of healing 999.999 gil < RE*ARD ( the tipical re*ard breaking the auction house. )

Cashmere Robe of healing 1.168.000 gil < ME ( always 1 gil under the last seller )

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Originally Posted by jgg1988

I absolutly agree with this post.
In my server:

Cashmere robe of healing:

Cashmere Robe of healing 999.999 gil < RE*ARD ( the tipical re*ard breaking the auction house. )

Cashmere Robe of healing 1.168.000 gil < ME ( always 1 gil under the last seller )

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If the demand was high enough to warrant the current selling price then the 999 item and your 1,168 item would have both sold rather quickly. Seeing how this item was listed at this low price long enough for you to notice it suggests that it was a perfectly reasonable price. Many people do not mindlessly buy items at whatever price happens to be listed on the AH. Many people have their own crafts, and if it is priced too high to be worth their time they will make it themselves.

Consider, perhaps, that if others put up items for a lower sale price, that the item is maybe not worth the higher price?

Items are given their worth by what people are willing to buy 'and' sell them for. Even crafted items are built from pieces you can find, thus creating no cost. The 'time/effort' required to level crafter and gear them out is negligible as you generally make money leveling and you can gear up by crafting gear with items you find. Once again, no cost.

Just because the first handful of people put, say, the Vanya or new Cashmere robes up for over a million gil does not immediately grant the item that permanent worth. It is no more correct them someone selling it for 100k or less.

Either use the open 'Market Board' (not Auction House) to make whatever you can from it, or put forth the effort to actually 'play the market' by buying out stock on things and re-listing for higher. People corner the market all the time and make crazy tons of money doing so.

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Originally Posted by jgg1988

I absolutly agree with this post.
In my server:

Cashmere robe of healing:

Cashmere Robe of healing 999.999 gil < RE*ARD ( the tipical re*ard breaking the auction house. )

Cashmere Robe of healing 1.168.000 gil < ME ( always 1 gil under the last seller )

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Is it that he's stupid as you say? Or is it you getting mad because now this seller has come into the picture, you're losing 168,000 gil profit if you want to sell before this person? There's nothing stopping you from waiting til the item sells, undercutting it yourself, or even straight out buying it and putting it up for your price.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but s/he isn't breaking anything. Without knowing the going rates of the materials of the robe on your server, I can still say with confidence that you're at least doubling your money on that sale. If you can't handle a smaller profit margin or waiting, that's on you. Not on the person undercutting you. Not on the game. You.
If s/he's willing to make less for the off-chance of getting money sooner, that's that person's prerogative. If consumers refuse to buy at your price after some time has passed after this person's sale, that just goes to show that they didn't quite find your price great to begin with and it's time for you to adapt.

guys we looking for solutions not complaining about each other XD lol

HQ Patrician gear sells for 15k usually on my server, and it costs, what, 1k each to make? I'd rather throw 20 pieces to sell at 10k each and sell fast, freeing up my shop slots to sell more, than do the whole "1 gil less thing". I really don't have the time to sit all day changing my price by 1 lame gil everytime someone puts a new piece up, so I just make a slash at the price that I'm comfortable with. Why should I care what other people think of my price slash? Guys come on, economy is cruel....

Making gil in this game is stupidly easy, how can people complain...

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Originally Posted by Oriana

guys we looking for solutions not complaining about each other XD lol

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Can you explain to me what the problem is? Because I really don't get it....

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

Can you explain to me what the problem is? Because I really don't get it....

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the problem is that people are changing the prince so easy with no cost they need to make the system if u want to change the price of something then u have to either pay money to put it back in the AH or ur item is lock and cant be move until few mins later that will cost the items to be near the same price for a longer time then be always random

The thing is, everything in this game is free and can be paid for with just "time". So if I farm all my mats for free using my time instead of buying them to make something, well then I can sell a 100k item for 1g and still make profit because I can value my time however I want to. It would still be more efficient to just undercut to 90k though.

The other complaint I see a lot is "people undercut because they are impatient". That argument is hypocritical in that if you were patient yourself, you would not have an issue waiting for those lower priced versions of said item to sell before yours does.

Oh wait, there's too many and people keep placing more of said item for less than mine! This is because the supply outstrips demand driving the prices down. If the demand were there, you would have no problem selling your higher priced item in time since eventually it will be the best deal. #economics

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Originally Posted by Oriana

the problem is that people are changing the prince so easy with no cost they need to make the system if u want to change the price of something then u have to either pay money to put it back in the AH or ur item is lock and cant be move until few mins later that will cost the items to be near the same price for a longer time then be always random

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So basically you want your item to be the next item sold, and the people who already had their item in the market have to suffer a fee to undercut you because you priced your item 1 gil less, giving yourself sale priority.

Why should someone have to wait/pay to undercut you? I'm not trying to attack you here but it just seems like you don't like the harsh freedom and reality which is to be expected from an economy. Fees wont change anything. The rich will just reprice, what is 200 gil to the people with millions? SE could put a time limit on price changing, but then players can more than likely change their price right after you listed your item and by the time you motice that your item has been undercut, the other guy's undercut cooldown will be up and he will just undercut you again.

I actually think the idea of charging to list items as was done in ffxi, among many others I am sure is a good idea if for no other reason than to remove gil from the economies. However speaking to the OP's point this will actually hurt those who try to sell things for beyond their worth, and make it even more painful for those who are undercut. The fact remains that undercutting in itself is not the true problem as it is merely a product of an economy. There are stylistic differences between a blind auction, an open auction, the current market system, but honestly they function more or less the same, and the true problem is that anyone can level a crafting class to 50 in several days.

The problem with undercutting is that an Electrum Ring made by Bob is exactly equal in quality to one made by Joe. In a traditional market, when something is vastly cheaper than another similar item, it is usually perceived to be lesser quality. It may not be, but there is no "Made in America" vs. "Made in China" stamp here to invoke peoples biases.

As for something being worth X amount of gil, it is entirely subjective. You can buy materials or farm them. You may enjoy crafting and not see it as anything other than a fun activity, or you may think your time is valuable and want that time spent to be recouped in the price of the item. These things lead everyone to assign a different value to items. When there is no absolute cost for anything, you can charge whatever you want, or charge nothing, and there is no consequence for doing so.When everyone can farm and make everything equally as well, there are no checks in place to normalize the prices of things. A limited supply of iron ore from only a handful of people and the price will normalize.

The only way the undercutting will stop is:
-Make mats have a minimum cost from vendors. If Electrum ore could only be bought from the Miners guild vendor for 10k per piece, nothing that uses Electrum ore would be less than 10k.
-Make a gil sink in the way of taxes or "cost of living". Can't pay your property tax? Lose your house.
-Make the game more difficult when you do actually go broke. Can't afford food? Permanent res weakness.
-Make each profession far more difficult to undertake so not everyone has the ability to do all of them. Guild dues and a large initial buy-in to join the Miners Guild would mean not everyone would be a miner. Double the initial cost and dues for each additional guild joined. Guild members are paid a salary based on the amount of ore they collect, and the guild in turn sells it to crafters at a specific price, that fluctuates with supply and demand. No one buying Electrum ore at 10k per piece and we have 2000 on hand? Drop the price 1k every hour. None on hand and it sells instantly at 10K? Raise the price 1k every hour.

I'd rather deal with undercutting than have any of those things.

wonder if they will do any change in the future for the Market board

There's no problem, and there is nothing that needs to be changed. If there's sufficient demand, then the undercutters will sell their product before yours, and you will sell yours, too. If there's insufficient demand, then the undercutters will reflect the new price, and you will need to adjust your price to match.

If you put an item up for sale, and nine people undercut you, and there's enough demand for twelve product, all theirs will sell, yours will sell, and two of the people YOU undercut will also sell.

If you put an item up for sale, and nine people undercut you, and there's enough demand for six product, six of the undercutters will sell, three of them will not, and neither will you or any of the people you undercut. You and the remaining undercutters will need to lower your price, because there's just no demand.

Cases where exactly the nine undercutters sell, and yours does not? SO very rare.

This is natural, and healthy, and there is no need for changes or adjustments, or weird taxes.

An item is only worth what the seller is willing to sell it for and a buyer is willing to pay for it. If people continue to undercut me, I will do the same until it makes more sense for me to just vendor it.

They can't fix something that's not broke. What is broken about the marketboard? Nothing. You want a change not a fix get it right.

Honestly...

Undercutting is fine. That -is- supply and demand. The more there is of something (and the slower it sells) the lower the price will go.
Even undercutting by thousands is fine, because again it's supply and demand.

The biggest problem on the FF14 Market is the people who not only undercut by 25%, but also flood the flipping market with tons of their cheap imported goods.

If the going rate is around 5,000 (maybe 4800-5200 is the current spread of undercutting) and someone comes along and puts up 1 item (or 1 small stack) for 3000. Chances are that if the item is fast moving, it will disappear so fast it won't ever really (truly) impact the people fighting over the regular value of the item. It's the equivalent of having a flash sale basically. Someone there at the right time / place will get a good deal. Then it goes back to normal.

The problem is when some economic ignorant person comes along with 10 of the same item, or 10 stacks of a consumable, and pushes them all up for thousands less than the original going rate. It's moronic because there's no way he can sell THAT MUCH in a fast time. So it sets a new standard price that NO ONE wants or benefits from. He may sell 1-2 of his items, but someone sick of his crap (or impatient) will come along and set the bar even lower and so on. Those guys are the ones I want to punch in the face. I understand people who are ok with taking less money to sell faster, but I don't understand why someone would want to make his OWN returns even less than they would be if he only undercut by 1-2%. It's freaking infuriating.

There are alternatives that no one has thought of.

The Market Board could cap you at averages. It could exist so that you could NEVER set a price lower (or greater!) than 5% than the average price. A friend of mine who is a Market Board junkie was talking to me about that system from some game I never played. It basically would set the going rate of an item to the mean. If more people put it up (and sell it) 5% less than that becomes the new "base" price. If there is less available, and you can get away with it, you raise the price 1-5% and hopefully set a new baseline or get lucky sales while other sellers are napping.

This honestly sounds better, and reflects real life economy quite a bit more reliably. It would also stop people (not naming names!) from controlling the market. The more lower-priced items they scoop up (in order to sell high) the lower they themselves drive the price. It's a much better system, I think.

Only thing they need to do is create more demand for the items, its a simple as making a quest asking for those items, more recipes with the old items, etc

What needs fixing is the OPs greedy attitude.

You are upset at people selling for less, but are your willing to pay more? Didn't think so.

The way the market boards work is great. The history showing the trends for pricing is also very helpful. I've priced items both up and down looking at the trends and sold accordingly. As far as I can tell the market is plenty healthy.

It is only fair to the rest of the community and player base that your NOT so rare item can NOT command top gil. This also blunts the the incentive for people to go to RMT gil spammer, and also reduce the desire for people to go gil farming.

Of course unless you are gil spammer yourself, you like to see prices for things inflated to hell.

And it was really good that SE did not make the market board an auction house where people bid up prices. D3 had their auction house, and I made plenty of real money (USD) off of it, and you had gold spammer up the whatevers and prices of stuff inflated to ridiculous levels which just makes it good for the flippers to generate funds or dollars. It is really good that SE implemented the market history. It is a great tool and it should help players not fall victim to being a mark for snipe bidders and flippers both on the buying or selling side.

(sry for bad english)

i sugested few month ago, about the AH to put a

BUY & SELL order

it will fix all the problem (from my point of view)

some guys dont want wait, and want undercut ? so why not selling directly to the "buyers" ?
of course those guys (buyers) will set a lower price to try make some benefit from it

and in same time other "normal" people will set a decent selling price for the item,
and if even so someone is trying to undercut the price "under" the cheapest buyers then the item will be automaticly sold to him
i think it wil stop our problem
for reference, im talking about something like "eve online" market, its the most stable AH game history have

There are times I've been bored and found MB items up for considerably less than vendor value. Purchased and vendored. I'm not rolling in gil or anything, but it covers costs of teles here and there.
You could always try controlling the market buy purchasing the items that are undercutting you and re-listing.

the things its, there is nothing of value on the market, myself in FFXI, i was always chasing gils, in FFXIV just by doing daily quest or things randomly, my wallet keep increasing

to be direct, something like an item when used extend your game time by 31 days, wait befor raging or trolling,

people wil have to buy those item in SE homepage (so money to SE) and resell it in game for gils (will decrease RMT to i guess),

but things it, people used REAL money on it so for sure they will not want to undercut it, in same time people will stop to undercut because
they will want to buy this item, and will desesperatly try to make some benefit everywhere

i hope you guys are understanding what im trying to say, and please dont troll its just an idea ;)